Senate Committee — RIDR — Brief — briefbeisanzubi_e

RIDR / Brief / briefbeisanzubi_e

Senate Committees

Brief for Standing Senate Committee on HumanRights Topic:Islamophobia in Canada Date:March 14, 2023 Presented by:Beisan Zubi, as an individual

Key recommendations:1) Move on from conversations about ‘appropriateness’ of the term “Islamophobia” –this is for the Muslim community to discuss and they will no doubt inform you if orwhen the term they use to describe hate directed towards them changes;2) Reject any analysis that frames human rights as competing or at odds with oneanother – this concept of ‘zero sum humanity’ is not real and a consequence of policyfailure rather than a reflection of reality;3) Reframe your understanding of racisms within your power and privileges aslegislators and away from individual manifestations – racism is perpetuated at thesystem level and the Senate of Canada has a duty to apply an antiracist lens to all itspolicy decisions to address this.

IntroductionI’d like to thank the Senate Human Rights Committee for considering the following testimony. My name is Beisan Zubi, I’m the daughter of Palestinian immigrants and I work as an equityand anti-oppression trainer. My mother’s family is Greek Orthodox Christian and my father’s family is Sunni Muslim,which is not a common pairing today, and was especially not in the 1970s; they moved toCanada from Nazareth so they could be together. They raised my brother and I tounderstand their backgrounds, while also encouraging us to build our own relationships withfaith.

So in the spirit of full disclosure about the experiences that informed the perspectiveI’m sharing with you today: I settled into a spiritual-but-not-religious framework. I do notself-identify as religiously Muslim, but I consider myself connected to the Muslim communitythrough family and culture. To better understand your work, I’ve read up on your past meetings to get an understandingof what you’ve heard so far. I’d like to use my time with you to situate your work within asystems-level framework to make it clear why your responsibility here is more than just tolisten and learn but to legislate change.

On ‘Islamophobia’Let me begin by saying that I believe this committee has spent far too much time on thequestion of whether there is a better term than ‘Islamophobia’ to use when discussing racismdirected towards Muslims. Language has always been, and will remain a malleable thing, but in the context of humanrights, its most important function is to empower people who have not been understood orheard to be able to better communicate their identity and experiences.

The term Islamophobia serves its purpose as it has allowed Muslims to create sharedunderstanding around their experiences — that in itself should satisfy this committee’sconcerns. If the term does need changing, that conversation will take place between

Muslims, and trust me, you’ll be notified. Until then, your work in eradicating racism — andspecifically Islamophobia — does not include mulling over a re-brand. I also acknowledge that the concept of phobia/fear has been a sticking point, and would liketo share a potentially more helpful

interpretation. The fear that underpins all hate is less afear of the ‘other’ (a Muslim person in this case) and much more viscerally a fear of one'sself or community losing power or privilege or social standing to that other. This is whyhateful acts that are given the suffix of ‘phobia’ often lead to situations that wouldn’t indicatesomeone was afraid of their victim at all. This fear happens because power in our society is concentrated at the systems-level.

Thispower structure is maintained by those who have it sharing a tiny bit of it and making therecipients of that tiny bit of power believe that there’s only that much to go around. This is ofcourse not true, but it creates the dynamic where people with a little bit of power see thosewith even less power than them as a threat, and not as they actually are, which is morevulnerable than them.

Zero-Sum HumanityThe concept that there’s a limited amount of something that everyone needs is often referredto in political theory as a zero-sum game, but when it comes to our rights, it’s betterdescribed as ‘zero-sum humanity.’ The impact of zero-sum humanity is that many people perceive anything that empowersothers as a direct threat to their own power or standing in society.

So, if you are still unsure about the applicability of the suffix ‘phobia’ in this or other contexts,recognize that the real fear underpinning hate is better understood, not of the unknown orothered subject, but as a fear of what’s intuitively known by the object: that our system isdesigned to make us fight for scraps in order to establish and maintain power structures inour society.

Evidence of this power struggle can be seen playing out in many cultural dynamics inCanada:- established immigrant communities with negative views towards irregular bordercrossers or refugee claimants (Focus Canada and Environics, 2018);- cisgendered women not wanting trans women to access their spaces and leadingtrans-exclusionary movements (Turnbull-Dugarte and McMillan, 2022);- Francophone Quebecers legislating against Allophones and Anglophone languagerights as well as minority religious rights (Coleman, 2009) Zero-sum humanity, or one group’s well-being should or would threaten another’s, is counterto the concept of universal human rights, and the work this committee has been tasked withdoing.

I ask this committee to be judicious in recognizing and calling it out, in others and inyourselves.

Zero sum humanity has been perpetuated by policy decisions made by the Canadiangovernment over the past few centuries, but fortunately the members of this committee canwork to change this.

Systemic factors exacerbating racismsFor example, when housing infrastructure, job creation or access to government services arenot kept in line with our population growth (CBC News, 2022), or when police and the justicesystem criminalize racialized people at a disproportionate rate (Global News, 2013), ourgovernment is perpetuating the idea that immigrants are taking something away (be itopportunity or supports or safety, whatever) from more settled populations.

The multiculturalism PR campaign pushed by this government can also be attributed tounrealistic expectations on what newcomers can achieve in this country withoutinfrastructure investments, recognition of foreign credentials, or enhanced communitysupport. All this has led to the model minority myth that some kinds of immigrants are moredesirable than others, which only serves to further entrench the belief in zero-sum humanity.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge that Canada is first and foremost a settler colonialstate and that its aggressive immigration quotas were essential in its agenda to displace anddominate Indigenous peoples through any and all means available (Bauder and Breen,2022). I’d suggest this committee hear from witnesses that are more qualified than I am toproperly unpack those policies for you.

Lived experiences of racismI know several people have testified to you about the intersections of systemic oppressions,but this committee seems to be more focused on the individual manifestations of racisminstead of the systemic forces behind them. While that might engender compassion, it won’thelp you legislate against the causes of racism, which are consistent and follow systemstheories. There are just too many intersections and compounding factors in individual experiences ofracism without a systems view.

For example, I’m a Palestinian Arab and as you’ve alreadyheard from many experts, anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia sharemany similar manifestations-- from overwhelmingly negative depictions in movies and media,the terrorist label, women being robbed of agency, the discomfort we’re met with when weself-advocate. However, some of us can choose to try and invisibilize ourselves to avoiddanger, and some of us simply cannot, even if they want to. For example, as a secularly-attired woman, veiled Muslim women are more visible andvulnerable than me in almost every way.

That said, my equally non-religious brother is notspared negative visibility because all it takes is a five o’clock shadow for him to be perceivedas the ‘other’. That might not make sense until you understand that this hyper-visibility wascreated and is perpetuated by this country’s ‘war on terror’ which continues to systemicallytarget Muslim and Arabs and feed into individual racisms.

Another incoherence, I’m often not immediately coded as Palestinian or even Arab and canoften be referred to as ‘racially ambiguous.’ So while I’m not actually Muslim, or South Asian,or Black, or Indigenous, I’ve been called slurs used against all of those communities. But thisracial incoherence, often taking shape through colorism, also has also allowed me to exist inwhite spaces and can even translate into benefitting from white privilege in somecircumstances. Trying to apply logic or rationality to understanding individual acts of racism or hatred canalmost obscure their root causes.

It’s more impactful for you to understand the systemicways racism is nurtured and enforced in Canada, if you want to get closer to findingsolutions to it. ConclusionIt’s unhelpful to try and understand racism or hate as something that takes place betweenindividuals, it must be understood as a response to the system you as Senators are chargedwith guiding. The duty of the Government of Canada, and of every Canadian Senator, is to understandhow racisms are systemically perpetuated, and act to change our systems in a just andexpedient manner.

Committee work can be helpful in increasing awareness, but unlessthose who hold the levers of power DO something to change systemic issues, it becomes aperformance of trauma with no end. This committee must be more judicious in recognizing all the ways that the myth of zero-sumhumanity presents itself in the work you do, and to be more rigorous in rejecting the falsedichotomy that any group’s dignity and human rights would or could come at the cost ofanother’s.

This idea needs to be rejected as it couldn’t be further from the truth: our collective liberationis intertwined, and none of us will be free until all of us are. Once you’re able to recognize and reject the hierarchies that only serve to reinforce systemicracism, you’ll be that much more effective and impactful in your roles on this human rightscommittee and as equitable legislators on the Canadian Senate. Referenced Sources: Bauder and Breen, 2022:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12134-022-00951-4 CBC News, 2022:https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-housing-supply-demand-2022-1.6440119

Coleman, 2009:https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-political-science-revue-canadienne-de-science-politique/article/abs/from-bill-22-to-bill-101-the-politics-of-language-under-the-parti-quebecois/E9AEC985C842290188E9C876A2B8ECE7 Focus Canada and Environics, 2018:https://environics.ca/news/environics-institute-releases-study-results-on-canadian-opinions-surrounding-immigration-and-minorities/ Global News, 2013:https://globalnews.ca/news/991471/correctional-investigator-calls-on-prison-system-to-keep-up-with-diversity/ Turnbull-Dugarte and McMillan, 2022:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/psj.12484

Document details

Collection	Senate Committees
Citation	RIDR / Brief / briefbeisanzubi_e
Type	committee
Volume / chapter	441 / Brief / briefbeisanzubi_e
Language	en
Format	pdf
Source	COMM_SEN
Identifier	bb2ba219e75643db9fd19f9bcfa2261f07f17b41

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